Celebrate Family All Year Round

Routines save time, and tempers. Like a mother managing a toddler's mood swings, our family has built some reliable backstops for those times in our week when work-weary, low-blood-sugar blowouts are most likely. Friday nights are always pizza-movie nights. Friends or dates are welcome; we rent one PG feature and one for after small children go to bed. We always keep the basic ingredients for pizza on hand  flour and yeast for the dough, mozzarella, and tomatoes (fresh, dried, or canned sauce, depending on the season). All other toppings vary with the garden and personal tastes. Picky children get to control the toppings on their own austere quadrant, while the adventurous may stake out another, piling on anything from smoked eggplant to caramelized onions, fresh herbs, and spinach.

Because it's a routine, our pizzas come together without any fuss as we gather in the kitchen to decompress, have a glass of wine if we are of age, and talk about everybody's week. I never have to think about what's for dinner on Fridays.

Takeout is not the only easy way out. With a basic repertoire of unfussy recipes in your head, the better part of valor may be just turning on the burner and giving it a shot. I also have a crafty trick of inviting over friends whose cooking I admire, offering whatever ingredients they need, and myself as sous-chef. For a dedicated non-cook, the first step is likely the hardest: convincing oneself it's worth the trouble in terms of health and household economy, let alone saving the junked-up world.

It really is. Cooking is the great divide between good eating and bad. The gains are quantifiable: Cooking and eating at home, even with quality ingredients, costs pennies on the dollar compared with meals prepared by a restaurant or factory. Shoppers who are daunted by the high price of organics may be looking at bar codes on boutique-organic prepared foods, not actual vegetables. A quality diet is not an elitist option for the do-it-yourselfer.

Home-cooked, whole-ingredient cuisine will save money. It will also help trim and keep off extra pounds when that's an issue  which it is for some two-thirds of American adults. Obesity is our most serious health problem, and our sneakiest, because so many calories slip in uncounted. Corn syrup and added fats have been outed as major ingredients in fast food, but they hide in packaged foods, too, even presumed-innocent ones like crackers. Cooking at home lets you guard the door, controlling not only what goes into your food but what stays out.

Households that have lost the soul of cooking from their routines may not know what they're missing: the song of a stir-fry sizzle, the small talk of clinking measuring spoons, the yeasty scent of rising dough, the painting of flavors onto a pizza before it slides into the oven. The choreography of many people working in one kitchen is, by itself, a certain definition of family, after people have made their separate ways home to be together. Kitchen-based family gatherings are cooperative, and, in the best of worlds, nourishing and soulful.

When everyone pitches in, calories get used up before anyone sits down to consume. But more significantly, a lot of talk happens first, news exchanged, secrets revealed across generations, paths cleared with a touch on the arm. I have given and received some of my life's most important hugs with those big oven-mitt pot holders on both hands.

Finally, cooking is good citizenship. It's the only way to get serious about putting locally raised foods into your diet, which keeps farmlands healthy and grocery money in the neighborhood. Cooking and eating with young children teaches them civility and practical skills they can use later on to save money and stay healthy, whatever may happen to the gas-fueled food industry in their lifetimes. Family time is at a premium for most of us, and legitimate competing interests can easily crowd out cooking. But if grabbing fast food is the only way to get the kids to their healthy fresh-air soccer practice on time, that's an interesting call. Artery-clogging specials that save a few minutes now can cost years later on.

We have dealt to today's kids the statistical hand of a shorter life expectancy than their parents, which would be us, the ones taking care of them. Our thrown-away food culture is the sole reason. As my grandfather would say, by taking the faster drive, what did we save?

Barbara Kingsolver's books include The Bean Trees,The Poisonwood Bible, and most recently, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life, from which this article is adapted.

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